Koji Osakaya

For our last night in San Francisco, we thought we’d try Kappa, one of the Japanese restaurants that Terina and Tim raved about.

When we got to Japantown however,we searched high and low for Kappa, but couldn’t seemed to find it. What we did find at that address is a dodgey karaoke bar and a closed down restaurant. We didn’t have an US sim so we didn’t try calling Kappa, and eventually we gave up and decided to try another Japanese restaurant in the area.

Without knowing where to go we randomly selected Koji Osakaya, a Japanese restaurant inside the shopping complex. We were a bit apprehensive once we sat down, I can tell immediately that the wait staff are certainly not Japanese, which is always a bad sign. We started off with croquette. It was OK, and not very oily.

Hubby ordered a curry rice for mains. When it came out he delightedly exclaimed “Hey there’s an egg!! I love eggs in my curry!”. Sadly I had to burst his bubble- there is ONE SLICE of egg, not even half an egg there. He got a bit sad about that. He did say that the curry was spicy enough but once again there is nothing special about it. There’s also a small bowl of limpish salad to go with his curry.

My ramen was slightly better. The noodles are ever so slightly bouncy, the charshu was tender and it has the right amount of veggies/meat/noodles ratio. There are a lot of room for improvement though. The soup, while tasty, has too much MSG. I am not an opponent of MSG, but moderation was not exercised here. The noodles could be bouncier (more “al dente”) and they could give me some seaweed instead of so much bamboo shoots.

Overall, 5.5/10- and for our last night in San Francisco, it summed up a pretty sad foodie trip here. After trying an outragiously expensive meal, food trucks, seafood restaurants here and here in San Francisco, the only places that will stay in our memory is Roli Roti at Ferry Building and Swan Oyster Depot.

Next time, hopefully we get to try something better in San Francisco.

To check out the other places we visited in USA, please visit my USA page here.